[imp] Interesting link for University email Providers

[Joseph Brennan]

--On Monday, June 11, 2007 9:02 -0600 Michael M Slusarz <slusarz at horde.org> 
wrote:

> http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070611/ap_on_hi_te/google_privacy



"The company says its stockpiles data to help its search engine
better understand its users so it can deliver more relevant results
and advertisements."


This is EXACTLY what is fundamentally wrong with Google.  It is
wonderful to see them state it so cluelessly.

Why would anyone object that a company compiles a dossier of as
much of each person's online activity is possible?  After all it
makes the ads more relevant.

In another forum I proposed that the difference between saying
"Gmail handles our undergrad email" and "we do not provide email
accounts to undergrads" is that in the former case we provide
commercially value to Google by identifying which Gmail users
are our students.  Is there any other substantive difference?

Many of our students use Gmail now, on their own.  I might be
kidding myself to think that Google has not identified them as
our students anyway based on their email content.


Joseph Brennan
Columbia University Information Technology